


Inevitably

by 235413



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 00:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1206325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/235413/pseuds/235413
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various Moriartys and inevitably, their Sherlocks. (ACD canon, The Woman in Green, A Game of Shadows, Sherlock, Elementary)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitably

1\. Sherlock Holmes is the world's only consulting detective and he speaks into the mist.

_(horror. admiration.)_

"I made a promise of inevitable destruction.”

Moriarty's body is broken below the waterfall but his eyes are not quite lifeless. They stare upward and watch the silhouette on the cliff edge, his words drowned out. But their meaning is still heard in some intuitive whisper and the synapses in Moriarty's brain flicker into the beginnings of a smile. His vision dims as the falls fragment into droplets, blurring out into infinite branches, mathematical equations, and the planets above shift toward alignment, not today, but in some future.

“It is one that I intend to keep.”

 

2\. A violin's whine seeps into the creak of stairs underfoot - Bach touches the back of Moriarty's mind but maybe that is still yet to come - and stutters out into talk of eternity.

"What a charming picture that would make," Moriarty tells Sherlock and when the time comes, it is not charming but familiar. A forgotten knock at the door, something only half remembered.

The shadows from the balcony are long when Moriarty falls again. Sherlock looks out into a night that is safer for the loss. Emptier, too. Colder.

And all that's left is an unfinished melody and an unfulfilled promise.

_(one that will stretch on eternally until we are others)_

"But we simply can't leave it at that, can we," Moriarty says from the street below or the depths of Sherlock's brain, but wait, didn't the criminal fall to his death-

 

3\. "Can we," Moriarty says to Sherlock. And two minds inhabited as one, he no longer speaks, simply letting Sherlock hear each thought. Your move, he silently tells him.

_(all that i have to say has already crossed your mind)_

Sherlock pushes a piece across the chessboard and hits the clock, saying with a smile, Your desperation to reap the benefits of a world in chaos has betrayed you.

Quite, Moriarty says but a twitch in his memory tells him otherwise, if he could recall what he has forgotten, if he knew what Sherlock blinded by the game has failed to see.

Sherlock rises. We both know how this ends, he says.

Moriarty steps forward and stands fast, moving not with hatred but conviction toward a purpose, an end almost understood.

The last thoughts through my mind will be yours, says Moriarty.

Gloved hands around his neck, a pause for breath fogging the sharp winter air, one step backwards.

One man rises from the falls. London is very quiet and Sherlock is alone. "I win."

 

4\. "I win," Moriarty says on the rooftop, and his heart breaks in two.

_(this time around, at long last, i remember. you see but you do not observe: we were made for each other, so take a fall with me)_

A pool, a pair of shoes. A wait that lasts twenty years.

But one that feels infinite, one that agonisingly outruns him, tick tick tick goes the clock, not the bomb, because who cares about the bomb in the end? Winning, losing, it's all misdirection, playing with key codes and missile plans and physical things.

Twenty years and all the wasted time in the world. A door, opened. Something half remembered, now clear.

Moriarty springs from him, and he will cling to his creator unfailingly. But don't disappoint, darling, he hums in the back of his brain until- ah, yes, of course, Sherlock lets him down. Should've seen it coming. Sherlock sees but he does not observe: there is no key. There is no key, there is only static consuming him, the numb buzz of disappointment in a life flatlining back into something desolately unique.

Not so fast, Sherlock says in the part of Moriarty's head that is steady and unarmoured, not a brain but a mind.

And Sherlock says aloud, "I am you."

It is known between them, each time they will stand quite apart until the balance tips and the story ends.

It is known between them, they don't touch until they fall, but- ahh, this time. This time, doofus, _darling_ , this time you're me and the light splinters over the head of the only consulting detective in the world, magnetising Moriarty's hand on to him- only just resisting, still yearning, offering a hand-

If you didn't know of the shoes, preserved desperately, or the pool, _nice touch, that_ , you would almost mistake them for unsentimental.

-Sherlock takes Moriarty's hand, and all that they were and ever will be is clutched between them.

 

5\. "I can't decide if I care for you more this time, or the last." Irene lies next to him, letting Sherlock run his hand down her back. She can't remember what she meant by it when Sherlock asks, and Irene decays into Moriarty and into someone Sherlock all but hates again.

_(i thought it was a problem solved but you dodge the final act every time. have you forgotten what you promised?)_

“There's only one way this can go,” Moriarty tells herself.

She sits at her canvas and tries to paint a better end for them, but inevitability is all she knows. “I know I've hurt you horribly, played you like a pawn, but I'll tire of the games one day... If I offer you a hand before we fall, will you take it?”

He is her masterpiece and their end is in his design. Not today, but in some future. And until then...

The planets shift above them but tonight she is too busy resting her head on his chest to notice.


End file.
